Progress

Since its launch in January 2013 and after having set up all necessary facilities, the European Lead Factory had rapidly delivered its first results. The first qualified hit list (QHL) was delivered in May 2014 and many more have followed since. The compounds in these lists have formed the basis of further programmes within the EU Lead Factory, which have resulted in highly active compounds validated with biochemical, biophysical and in some cases x-ray crystallographic data. For a more detailed overview of what programmes have delivered, go to the results page.

In addition, over 200,000 unprecedented compounds have been synthesised and added to the Joint European Compound Library (JECL). Together with the more than 300,000 compounds of the EFPIA collection, over 500,000 compounds are available in the JECL for screening.

Become part of this success story! If you have a screening assay for a drug target to treat a human disease in an innovative way, read more on the pages for drug target proposers on how you can participate and benefit.

Drug targets

So far, more than 2,400 hit compounds and 3,000 bespoke compounds have been handed over to European academics and SMEs to kick-start their drug development programmes.

By June 2018, 88 drug targets have been accepted by the Screening Selection Committee. No less than 72 have completed the ultra-HTS campaign and 72 Qualified Hit Lists have been delivered by the European Screening Centre. Of these 38 programmes have progressed even further into the Improved Hit List phase, at the programme owners' choice, getting the opportunity to further develop these initial hits with additional studies funded by IMI, including for example resynthesis, hit expansion, DMPK and crystallography. As a consequence, 37 Improved Hit Lists have been delivered and more than 40 crystal structures solved.

Library designs

On average 250 compounds based on exciting new chemistries have been synthesized daily in the European Lead Factory over the past four years. The majority of these have now been screened against potential drug targets.

The Public Chemistry Consortium has now successfully validated almost 500 library proposals and has produced over 200,000 compounds by June 2018. Together with the compounds from EFPIA, more than 500,000 compounds are available in the Screening Set in 2018.

As such, the goal supplement the Joint European Compound Library with 200,000 publicly sourced compounds to the existing 300,000+ EFPIA compounds in by May 2018 have been achieved.

Interested?

Contact the programme office to know more how you can interact with the European Lead Factory

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The research leading to these results has received support from the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking under grant agreement n' 115489, resources of which are composed of financial contribution from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7 / 2007-2013) and EFPIA companies' in kind contribution.